Renewables represent the future, even if they get far less in subsidies than fossil fuels. At least according to the data in the latest report from the International Energy Agency.
The agency's World Energy Outlook 2015 provides a comprehensive forecast of the use and consumption of energy worldwide. Energy demand is still rising—the IEA estimates that total global energy demand will rise by 33% by 2040—but a growing proportion of it will come from renewables. The growing popularity of efficiency and regulations promoting efficiency, meanwhile, will also keep a ceiling on overall demand.
Like last year's report, the 2015 report also underscores the vast sea change that has taken place in the world energy scenario. In the 2004 IEA report, solar didn't rate a mention and "efficiency" was only mentioned twice in the summary.
Sea change.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:32AM
and moved away from oil in 40 years ago.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday November 13 2015, @07:07AM
Sounds like one of the reasons he is so looked down upon... how dare he hurt their profits!
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:15PM
Technology may not have been realistically up to the job of replacing coal and oil back then.
In the case of photovoltaics, just think how much semiconductor tech and applied physics have advanced in the past 40 years!
It's happening *now* because it is economically and scientifically feasible now.